Nashville is the subject of a TV show these days, as you might have heard, and Dean told the crowd of about 350 people about an early scene when power broker/dealmaker/dastardly daddy Lamar Wyatt is urging his son-in-law, Teddy Conrad, to run for mayor. Wyatt says our town isn’t just “some backwater hamlet. This is a thriving, prosperous city, an industrial and cultural juggernaut.”

Dean then introduced Meacham, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and former Newsweek editor who recently moved here after growing up in Chattanooga and spending many years in New York. Meacham, who is also executive editor of Random House, thanked Dean and then turned to the crowd.

“With that kind introduction,” he said, “I know you were expecting Connie Britton.”